Thank you. I agree with you the ultimate aim of Yoga is a religious aim of union with an ultimate realty or ultimate being. However we have to be careful when we call this "God" because there are so many concepts of God, in the Indian philosophical and theological tradition itself, that it can be misleading to use this term "God" Some of the concepts of God in the Indian tradition are not even theistic. In Advaita Vedanta, the monistic Brahman or absolute reality is seen as the Self(The self is God); In Mimassa the concept of God is that dharma, knowledge or eternal laws and principles is God - but this is actually technically not "God"

The Indian philosophical and theological tradition had a very complex understanding of "God" The usage of this term "God" creates many problems - we should be faithful to the original Sanskrit itself and what it is saying. There are many words in Sanskrit that have no English equivalent, so each Sanskrit word has to explained. The word Brahman for instance literally means all expansive, infinite and all encompassing existence. The word jivaatman literally means the living entity, living spark. The union of Brahman with Jivatman therefore is: "The union of the living entity with the expansive, infinite and all encompassing existence" This is much more profound meaning than "Union of soul with God" in my opinion.

A lot gets lost in translation when we translate complex Sanskrit words into English.

Imperial,

thank you very much! I appreciate your compliments

Jinit,

That is a very good idea, there is actually a description of the Muslim educational institutions the Madrasas in the reference, Education in Ancient and Medieval India I am currently working on the next installment on the medical system, so please feel free to add a section to the education section on the education during the Sultanate era.

I agree with your definition of Yog as Union of Brahman with Jivatman. But I had wanted to simplify for the sake of many posters who must be avidly following your posts now. Great going and best wishes !

Thank you. I agree with you the ultimate aim of Yoga is a religious aim of union with an ultimate realty or ultimate being. However we have to be careful when we call this "God" because there are so many concepts of God, in the Indian philosophical and theological tradition itself, that it can be misleading to use this term "God" .

This is absolutely correct.

In the Indian concept , application of the terms 'religion', 'God' would be very misleading.

A lot gets lost in translation when we translate complex Sanskrit words into English.

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By the time of the Grammarian Panini, or rather even to the time of his predecessor- Yaksha, sanskrit had evolved to the level, that many meaninsg of words had already been lost, and lists were required of sanskrit words and meanings.

Yaksha too is supposed to have referred to many grammarians who had gone before him.

To read this matter and decode it , itself will take me millions of years and one could imagine the amount of time spent to compose such gigantic, marvelous and educative posts.
And I feel with 71 posts , Joshua made an impact of 7100 posts and with that , he becomes a 'Real Historian'
Cheers and let this flow be continuing and enlightening us .
[ And this post is my first one through my new machine ]

My humblest apologies for taking so long with writing the installment on the medical sciences. I think this section is probably going to be the largest section, I had no idea how extensive the scope of Ayurveda was and to do justice to it I must cover as wide an area as possible. I have nearly completed it now, so should be able to post it by the end of the day at the maximum.

Thanks Manas, I was busy yesterday so could not complete it. It is completed now, now I am just finishing the referencing part, as I think it is crucial to provide high quality and credible references to validate the claims in the article, as many of the claims in the article are going to sound fantastic, but I can vouchsafe that every claim is 100% fact and I have references to prove it.